17 pages • 34 minutes read
W. D. SnodgrassMementos, 1
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Power of Memory
As the poem’s title suggests, one of the main themes of “Mementos, 1” is the power seemingly small but personally significant items can hold for recalling the past. The poem is centered on the photograph the speaker finds, and this photograph serves as a framing device for the recollection and unfolding of his memories of his former wife and the war. The inclusion of the number 1 in the poem’s title suggests this is the first memento the speaker ever received in relation to his wife while also suggesting that it may also still rank first for him in emotional weight and importance.
As the poem unfolds, the speaker reveals how the photograph changes meaning depending on the memory he associates with it. When he first rediscovers the photograph, it serves as a memento of meeting his wife at “our first dance” (Line 10), and his instinctive reaction is one of happiness and fondness, as he admits, “[T]hat first second, I was glad” to have found the photograph again (Line 7). The photograph thus momentarily transports him back to an earlier stage of his life and rekindles the memory, inspiring not only an intellectual recollection of the time and place the photo dates from but a resurgence of the emotions he once felt as a much younger man encountering this woman for the first time. The shifting between present and past tenses in the lines, “You stand / Just as you stood—shy, delicate, slender” (Lines 7-8) emphasizes how the photo has the ability to both capture a moment in time, making it ageless, and recreate that moment afresh when used as a memento at a later date.
In the poem’s third stanza, the photo conjures up a different context and a different memory for the speaker. He recalls his time in the army during World War II and remembers how the photo functioned as an escape from the horrors of war that frightened him: “I carried / This glimpse of you, there, to choke down my fear” (Lines 16-17). Furthermore, the photo was not just a memento of the love he had left behind at home but a symbol of a more hopeful future—a small piece of proof that “it had been” (Line 17) and “that it might come back” (Line 17). The photo’s first use as a memento was therefore as a symbol of an active love the speaker hoped to resume as soon as he could once the war ended.
In the poem’s closing stanza, the photo is still the same, and it captures the same moment in time, but the context is now different, and its meaning as a memento has shifted. Now divorced from the woman in the photograph and speaking far more cynically about love, the speaker admits their marriage was a failure. However, just as the photo reminded the speaker as a young soldier of both past and promised future simultaneously so too does the photo serve as a symbol of another kind of future for the speaker at the poem’s end: “I put back your picture. Someday, in due course / I will find that it’s still there” (Lines 23-24). The speaker’s brief imagining of yet another encounter with the photo at a later date suggests that he keeps the photo because it represents still-important emotional ties, and that perhaps he is hoping to one day be pleasantly surprised and transported by the power of memory all over again.
Idealism Versus Disillusionment
The speaker’s rediscovery of the photograph does not just usher in the thematic power of memory in the poem; it also represents the divide between youthful idealism and eventual disillusionment. At the time the photo was taken, both the speaker and the woman pictured were young and unmarried during “our first dance” (Line 10). The speaker’s description in Line 8 of his ex-wife’s appearance in the photograph emphasizes her innocence and inexperience (“shy”) and her seeming fragility (“delicate, slender”) as a young woman. He then recalls how her beauty at the dance “stunned / Us all” (Lines 10-11)—a moment of simple, strong attraction and desire. For the speaker, the photo captures the essence of what it was like to be young and idealistic enough to be open to the idea of love as soon as a suitable object of affection appeared: “Well, our needs were different then / And our ideals came easy” (Lines 11-12). His claim that “ideals came easy” to him as a young man hints at the disillusionment that would later follow while also suggesting that such easily-found and easily-embraced youthful ideals tend to be powerful but ultimately rather shallow.
In the poem’s closing stanza, the speaker reveals what happened after he and the pictured young woman reunited and married after the war. His description of the marriage’s unravelling is cynical and bleak, as the couple eventually “drained out one another’s life force / with lies, self-denial, unspoken regret” (Lines 19-20). Instead of offering the speaker a happier future after the war, the marriage led to a different kind of conflict and suffering, culminating in “the divorce / And the treachery” (Lines 21-22). Most cynically of all, the speaker credits the source of his former youthful idealism as ignorance instead of purity of feeling: “Say it: before we met” (Line 22)—a line that suggests he could only be in love with the woman before he had any genuine familiarity with her, and once the relationship became real and truly intimate it was disappointing or even destructive. The photo thus represents a moment in which idealism and infatuation reigned supreme in the speaker’s life while his present reflections when he rediscovers it only serve to emphasize just how much has changed for both of them in the ensuing years.
The Tenacity of Human Connection
While the relationship the speaker describes ultimately dissolved, his mixed emotions upon rediscovering the photograph speak to the tenacity of human connections. Coming across the photograph inspires a powerful, visceral reaction in him: “I stopped there cold / Like a man raking piles of dead leaves in his yard / Who has turned up a severed hand” (Lines 4-6). This grotesque image is a jarring shift in tone, but the equation of the rediscovery of the photo with the raking up of a severed hand immediately emphasizes just how strong the emotions involved are—the speaker “stop[s] there cold” the moment he sees the photo as if unable to tear his eyes away. The image of the severed hand also suggests the depths of the bond he once had with the woman in the picture as though losing his relationship with her was the emotional equivalent of losing a part of the body. For better or for worse, she became a part of who he was.
While recalling his military service in World War II, the speaker also mentions how it was the connection he had (or thought he had) with the woman in the photograph that helped to keep him stable and inspired his will to survive. Instead of mentioning patriotism or any kind of political ideal, he singles out this emotional, human connection as having been of paramount importance during “the war and those two long years / Overseas” (Lines 13-14). Faced with the horrors of war, the speaker cherished the photo and his love for the woman as reminders of better times, past and future: “I carried / This glimpse of you, there” (Lines 15-16). Although the connection somehow faltered in the post-war years, the speaker still readily acknowledges just how much it meant to him during his most challenging times.
Finally, the speaker’s decision not to part with the photo at the poem’s close hints again at the depth and tenacity of the connection, even though it is in most respects one that belongs to the past. In spite of the “divorce” (Line 21) and the “treachery” (Line 22) that were the final chapter of the relationship, the speaker admits that he cannot bring himself to let go completely: “Still, / I put back your picture” (Lines 22-23). The continuing presence of the photo suggests that the speaker’s relationship with the woman cannot ever be fully forgotten and undone and that there is something in the speaker’s continuing attachment to the photo that suggests he may be, in a way, almost grateful for the undeniable importance of that bond.
